Record meteorite hit Norway
- Thread starter Ptarmigan
- Start date
Maj.Striker
Swabbie
Banned
Meteorites are quite fascinating though...till the big mammajamma comes. 
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Isn't that kind of a silly way to measure something for all sorts of reasons? From the explosion not being the dangerous part of an atomic weapon to the fact that of all the nuclear explosions in history the Hiroshima bomb is the one that's hardest to accurately determine...
I wish my school had an Atomic bomb class
Yes, the exact size of the Hiroshima bomb is hard to determine, but the two bombs used in WWII are the only ones that have been detonated over a populated area, and are thus our only detailed sample of what multi-kiloton explosions can do to populated areas.
Hopefully, seeing the effects of this meteorite will make a few more people realize the reality of the threat of meteor impacts and of the need to develop better spaceflight technology to deflect them before they hit.
Hopefully, seeing the effects of this meteorite will make a few more people realize the reality of the threat of meteor impacts and of the need to develop better spaceflight technology to deflect them before they hit.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
To the best of my knowledge we're *not* talking about what explosions can do to populated areas -- the meteorites in question haven't been flattening buildings.
(And the point still stands, even if you're limiting yourself to World-War-II-blasts-minus-Trinity - the Nagasaki bomb is a much better unit of comparison because can be accurately measured...)
Maj.Striker
Swabbie
Banned
Quarto said:Yeah. Also, I'm looking for an insurance company that provides insurance against alien abduction.
We're working on it. That's a cash cow...as the policy requirements to file a claim will need documented indisputable proof of abduction. We can collect premium and never have to pay out...
My point is that an impact of this size can (and if we do nothing to prevent it, porbably WILL) happen on a populated area at least once within the next thousand years or so. We should at the very least be trying to get as accurate an image as possible of the extent of destruction that meteorites of this size can induce.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
But there's absolutely nothing to back this view up - I certainly don't recall any historically-recorded meteorite impact that has ever significantly affected the human population. That's not to say it can't happen (obviously, when you're dealing with rocks falling out of the sky, anything can happen)... but "probably will" is a very excessive way of putting it. From a statistical point of view, there is a much, much bigger chance of a plane falling out of the sky right on top of your house than there is for a meteorite to ever hurt any human being.Ijuin said:
First of all we have like ten times as much urban land these days as there was before industrialization began nearly 300 years ago. I may have overstated the probability, but eventually a meteor of comparable size to the one that struck Norway recently WILL strike a populated area unless we deflect or destroy it, whether it happens a hundred years from now or a million.
The 1908 Tunguska impact in Siberia was somewhere around 10 megatons equivalent. It was only random chance that it landed in an uninhabited area--if it had arrived eight hours later, central Europe would have been under it.
The 1908 Tunguska impact in Siberia was somewhere around 10 megatons equivalent. It was only random chance that it landed in an uninhabited area--if it had arrived eight hours later, central Europe would have been under it.
ChrisReid
Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Why are we debating this? There's no question about whether or not it's physically possible for a rock to fall from the sky and hit a city, but that's seems irrelevant to the discussion so far (and yet another tangent off the awkward "Hiroshima sized explosion" thing).
RATM
Spaceman
Man, you guys nitpick way too much. Relax. From what I can figure out, I can sum it up to this:
Rocks fall from skies blow shit up;
There's a chance that a rock from the sky that falls might blow some of our shit up ;
Therefore we should do something to prevent it from blowing our shit up.
It doesn't matter if the impact is more like Nagasaki or Hiroshima. That's irrelevent to most humans. I don't know the specifics of either. All I know is that those two bombs blew shit up a lot more than a stick of TNT and that's all I care to know and it's enough to make me hope it never happens again.
Rocks fall from skies blow shit up;
There's a chance that a rock from the sky that falls might blow some of our shit up ;
Therefore we should do something to prevent it from blowing our shit up.
It doesn't matter if the impact is more like Nagasaki or Hiroshima. That's irrelevent to most humans. I don't know the specifics of either. All I know is that those two bombs blew shit up a lot more than a stick of TNT and that's all I care to know and it's enough to make me hope it never happens again.